The kingmakers

Gauri Chhabra

From the selection of candidates to funding to political campaigning and media outreach, Kejriwal’s Delhi election campaign committee was the driving force behind the party’s awe-inspiring push back against the BJP earlier this month. Today no political party or celebrity can do without campaign managers — the backroom heroes who manage your public face to your smile, to appearances to rallies and to the way you manage your media footprint.

Who is a campaign manager?

According to Wikipedia, a campaign manager is a paid or volunteer individual, whose role is to coordinate the campaign’s operations such as fundraising, advertising, polling, getting out the vote and other activities supporting the effort, directly.

Apart from the candidate, a campaign manager is often a campaign’s most visible leader. However, modern campaign managers, particularly at the presidential level, are mostly concerned with executing strategy and not with setting it. Particularly for large, well-funded campaigns, campaign managers often manage a huge number of staffers and volunteers in a variety of departments, while also coordinating closely with the candidate and outside consultants. In addition to their past experience, experienced campaign managers also bring with them knowledge of campaign management tools and relationships with political consultants.

Getting in

Educational qualification: There is no fixed academic pathway that would make you a campaign manager. However, for a political campaign manager, the first step is to earn a bachelor’s degree in political science, campaign management or a related field. These programmes would give you a vital insight into the inner workings of the political systems and will cover political parties, political analysis and politics in the media. Advanced political science or campaign management courses might help you in interpreting voter behaviour, deciphering polls and executing campaign strategies.

Many students who want to manage campaigns major in political science. While that is a standard choice, very few political jobs require a degree in political science. Political science courses often teach you how things are supposed to work, not the way they actually work in the real world.

Thereafter, you can focus on skills specific to the role, such as running a campaign office, advertising for candidates and understanding legislative affairs.

Interning: Most of the degree programmes that you undertake offer internships or immersion programmes in a campaign office. You can also volunteer for a campaign. This role can help you contact voters, assist with fundraising and conduct office duties. You can gauge your own interest and aptitude in the field and can turn interning into a pre-placement offer in case the organisation likes your connecting skills and the way you can strategise and build contacts.

Role and responsibilities

In case you opt to be a political campaign manager, you are in for an exciting roller-coaster ride where your role will never be the same in daily operations. One day, you may organise a rally, the next you may manage the outdoor publicity and media campaign of the party’s candidate, his public appearance, his positioning statements and his speeches.

A campaign manager will lead a candidate’s staff, overseeing the work of the other campaign workers and recruit donors, volunteers, and raise funds While some campaign managers are short term, working only until a politician is elected, others, such as the president’s campaign manager, will go on as a consultant long after the election is over.

Where can you work?

Political parties: Political campaigns typically have several entry-level positions available, such as volunteer coordinator, fundraiser or scheduler. Campaign workers who demonstrate an ability to handle demanding assignments may be promoted to supervisory or consultant positions, eventually advancing to the role of a campaign manager.

As a political campaign manager, you would oversee politicians’ bids for public office. You would also be responsible for a variety of services, including political consultation, marketing, fundraising and public relations. You would often hire, train and coordinate the activities of staff members and volunteers in all aspects of the campaign.

Marketing department of MNC: You can also work in company marketing departments, planning and managing advertising and other marketing communication campaigns where your role would be to develop the most effective way to communicate the benefits of the company’s products and services to customers and prospects. Depending on the resources in the company, you may work with an internal team that produces the campaign material or they may liaise with an external advertising agency.

You may be responsible for developing integrated B2C and B2B marketing campaign strategies and activity plans for key programmes and manage the implementation, tracking and measurement of integrated marketing campaigns, on time. In case you are working with an external agency, you would brief them about creative, digital and media planning activities to deliver campaign activity and ensure that campaigns are achieving appropriate returns on investment in line with the corporate goals. You will also need to have exceptional analytical experience combined with direct e-marketing campaign management experience and be well versed with CPC Media buying platform such as mobile ads Google Networks

Ad agency: You can also work with an ad agency where your role would be to select the right media for communicating with customers and prospects. You must have a detailed understanding of your target audience and the media they prefer, using audience and readership surveys as a guide. With the growing importance of digital and social media, you must be familiar with the whole media spectrum. Familiarity with media planning and buying techniques will help you in making the right media choices and evaluate media recommendations of an advertising agency.

Entertainment: As a campaign manager you can also be associated with the glamour and glitz of the entertainment industry where you would be responsible for building, launching and managing advertising campaigns to drive great results as well providing top-notch customer service to sales partners and advertising customers. Besides, you would be building, executing, and monitoring online advertising campaigns and work closely with the performance and yield managers, sales reps, ad product, and ad technology team members to ensure successful implementation and delivery of all advertising campaigns.

Growing footprint

The career pathway of a campaign manager is on a high growth mode. A part of this growth is likely to come from developing trends in internet marketing, which is of increasing importance for audience outreach to all organisations as the digital economy becomes a reality. Marketing channels are becoming more thoroughly integrated as people watch television shows via computers and mobile devices and use the internet to find and disseminate information to others. These changes are making it necessary for organisations to update their marketing strategies and develop new supply and information chain models to satisfy customers and maintain margins — tasks for which advertising campaign managers are trained and prepared.